Several years ago, I noticed an unpleasant change within myself. When I have a toxic cocktail of stress, anxiety, and sadness and then a wedge of frustration or anger is introduced to the emotional glass, my brain goes into overload.

It’s like having a flare gun going off in the frontal lobe. Brilliant, angry, incandescent red and I’m scrambling for a fire extinguisher all while riding this surge of emotions.

I’ve started labeling it animal brain because I am in such an instinctive state of fight and flight and freeze. All at the same time.

The logical side of me is screaming about solutions. The emotional side of me is strangling the logical side. The Christian side is crying and praying and launching my cares at God and the cross as though my worries were children-toy sticky hands. Fling it out. Get it to stick. And then yank it back because I need to freak out all the more.

I had a very frustrating situation recently. And I will likely have to deal with the repercussions tomorrow. And the uncertainty about tomorrow is waking animal brain from its lulled slumber that I managed to get it into yesterday.

So this morning, the anxiety rose. I did graceless versions of sun salutations. Deep breathing exercises. I went through logical steps on what and how and why and next steps. And still.

The stress coiled within me. Nibbled on my ribs and yoked my shoulders. Vision turns inward.

I went to a local supply store to pick up some fresh groceries. Things were good. Sunlight and blue sky and an empty, quiet road.

And then I came home to my jubilant dogs. Although Lori’s acted a little coy. And I was going to take them out one last time before I visited with my friend when I noticed a weird piece of trash in the front foyer.

Cellophaneish mylar packaging. I don’t know what the packaging was. I know that it was a bag of 60 glucosamine tablets that I give my dogs one each per day.

And that the package had been one of two that arrived from Amazon on Friday but I hadn’t stowed in the kitchen because I was a bit forgetful and the dogs were ignoring it until last night but then they dismissed it again so I dismissed it again until I came back from the store to realize 40 were gone.

The flare gun in the brain went off and I was crying and angry and frustrated and overwhelmed and I could breathe but I couldn’t focus.

I called my friend. She’s a genius dog person she knows everything. She didn’t know because she loves her dogs and she’s super smart but she’s not a veterinarian.

Animal poison control?

We put off the meeting. I won’t bore you with the details of my painful indecision while my cheerful dogs sauntered around the backyard feeling most satisfied with their full bellies.

Thank goodness for Google. As I practice deep breathing and shake my logical side into action I push through the animal flames and find the tiny nugget of control that is the very epicenter of my existence. Or at least my current existence.

And I used that fragment to read several credible looking resources to discover that my dogs will….

Be fine. They might have some digestive upset, but they are and will be fine.

Just like I am fine. Or can be fine but I have to continue to learn how to process the emotions so that the flare becomes a candle flame that becomes a match stick that becomes a nothing.

I want that for myself.

And so I barricaded the dogs in the kitchen and drove to meet my friend and I didn’t feel guilty about the dogs and I remembered a lesson I relearned from Max Lucado or New York Times that suggests counting blessings and naming things I’m grateful for out loud. So as I swung through curving country lanes, I listed my blessings.

My husband

My children

My work and my writing

My silly dogs

The mountains and the wind and the autumn leaves raining in the wind

Books and literature and art and beautiful things

Music. And God and grace and faith and salvation.

My incredibly silly dogs who eat 40 glucosamine tablets and freak me out

And frustrating situations that are still worrying me. But they shall ebb and pass.

Much like the ocean’s tides

The phases of the moon

The leaves raining from the trees

And so I start living again.